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Re: Dubya causes chaos

On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Don Smith wrote:
> There are other alternatives between "sitting on our asses" and
> bombing/invading the country.  There's humanitarian aid to the poor
> people so they can have an infrastructure which they need to even start
> working against the regime.

How can you get "humanitarian aid" to those people so long as the regime
is running the show, though?  *Especially* if the point of your "aid" is
to lay the foundation for an opposition to the regime?

> There's working with local allies (rather than dictating policy to
> them).

I do think the U.S. blew it when they encouraged the Iraqi people to rise
up against Hussein, and many did, but then the U.S. failed to follow
through and help them in their revolt -- so Hussein rounded up the rebels
and punished them.  (Correct me if I'm remembering this wrong.)

> When even *Kuwait* is telling the US to back off Iraq, I think it's
> worth considering, don't you?

Sure, but you can only consider things for so long before you make
decisions.  And decisions, by their very nature, will mean that you stop
considering certain things that are antithetical to those decisions.

> Rather than shaking sabers and demonizing Hussein (who, of course,
> doesn't need much help in that department, although we did help him back
> when he was our buddy) . . .

If memory serves, he was "our buddy" back in the '80s because he was
waging a war against Iran and the Ayatollah Khomeini, who of course had
thrown out the American-backed Shah and taken the American embassy
hostage.  One of those "enemy of my enemy is my friend" things.

I caught a couple of Canadian documentaries on Iranian ex-pats today and
was struck by one film's image of women in modern/secular/western dress
marching in Tehran on International Women's Day in 1979, and by one
woman's account of how she and her friends were hoping to replace the Shah
with a democracy, but instead, the Ayatollah stole the show and replaced
the Shah's dictatorship with his own.  One Iranian philosopher says the
revolution was a "theory-less revolution", and that this lack of a
political theory allowed the Ayatollah to substitute his own "personal
charisma" for any sort of guiding political philosophy.  It was an
interesting set of films; it was also interesting to see how one film
included an interview with Hassan something-or-other (a black American
convert to Islam who was once named David Belfield, and who fled America
after assassinating an Iranian opponent of the Ayatollah's, and who
apparently went on to co-star in the film _Kandahar_ last year), and it
made only the most fleeting of references to the fact that this guy (who
makes some fairly rational criticisms of the Iranian government, and how
the people have been conditioned to accept their government's authority by
centuries of feudalism -- so the problems in Iran are not due to Islam,
but to the culture) has admitted to killing a guy in cold blood.  It's
amazing to me that a film could gloss that over so easily -- and write it
off not as misplaced religious zeal or something, but as an outgrowth of
the guy's resentment towards America for how it treats black people.

Not sure how that ties into anything.  Just musing out loud, here.

--- Peter T. Chattaway --------------------------- peter at chattaway_com ---
 If true love never did exist how could we know its name? -- Sam Phillips
          Happiness happens but I want joy. -- Marjorie Cardwell

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